EDITORIAL: It's how, not when, state Legislature works

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Freshman state Sen. Terry Gipson has gotten a fair amount of mileage out of a cleverly packaged initiative to restrict the hours during which state lawmakers pass legislation.

Characterizing legislation passed in the wee hours as "vampire bills," Gipson, D-Rhinebeck, is sponsor of a measure that would prohibit the Assembly and Senate from voting between the hours of 9 p.m. and 9 a.m.

In a supporting memo to the bill, Gipson characterizes bills that are passed in late sessions as unable to stand the light of day, by which constituents might better see the proposals, presumably yielding a more representative government.

We get it. The Albany World habit of late-night action certainly looks like an effort to do the people's business under cover of darkness.

But the late-night sessions are mere symptoms of a much broader pathology.

Simply put, there is no legislative process in Albany World worthy of the name.

Three men (four, this year) negotiating a complicated set of agreements behind closed doors and then rushing members to the floor to pass the resulting stacks of bills is an unholy mess. It is a way of doing business that almost certainly is intended to prevent the formation of resistance, be it from the public, broadly speaking, or from lobbyists for the well-organized special interests.

When lawmakers vote on legislation is not the issue, however, although we'll grant it certainly doesn't look good.

But if legislators instead voted at high noon on the Empire Plaza it wouldn't fix the heart of the problem, which is that legislation moves quickly from secret conclave to law as part of a highly secretive horse-trading process that freezes out the public.

Forcing legislators to wait up to 12 hours to begin or finish their work won't change that.

Votes at high noon on the Empire Plaza wouldn't change that.

Gipson is on the right track, but limiting the hours of votes is but a tiny step toward cleaning up what ails this broken process.